Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Newbie Tuesday: Facial cleansers - submit your recipes!

Hi everyone! For those of you playing along at home, I'd really like to see your facial cleanser recipes as we make them. I know some of you have made huge changes - like Anna who used decyl glucoside and SCI! - and it would be awesome to see what you're doing so others can follow along!

If you've made some changes to two recipes from last week - the base recipe and the modified recipes with humectants and cationic polymers - or any future recipes, please share them and your opinions on what you've made with your fellow learners! Why keep that information to yourself when you could share with someone else who's as passionate about bath & body products as you are?

If you want to send along pictures - which would be awesome! - please send them to sjbarclay@telus.net with the recipe! Or post the recipes here or in other related posts, and I'll put together a round up in the near future!

3 comments:

I'm sorry for not responding any sooner, life got in the way over here.

I finally got some time (and a clean enough kitchen - it's really hard to keep everything disinfected/sanitized in this little kitchen of mine :( After the initial cleanse with chloride/alcohol sprits I just keep all my utensils/tools/bottles on kitchen towels soaked in 70% alcohol and hope for the best!)

to make my version of the cleanser tonight, and over the next few days I'll make a little report on how it went/how I like the cleanser. So I apologize for taking so long, but I will "hand in" something within the next few days :)

I didn’t have all of the ingredients in the base recipe for dry skin (and BSB seems impossible to find in Europe), so I ended up substituting two out of three surfactants. I chose these two as DSL is advertised as mild and therefore great in face products, and I've used SCI before in face products and liked it.

I added green tea and licorice root because I am paranoid about pimples (and adooooore adding actives/extracts in anything and everything).And I added bisabolol alpha for its supposed calming/soothing effect.

Because of my dry (prone to being flaky) skin, I also adore the feeling of having a film on my face that gives me a soft, conditioned and smooth feeling (my ultimate cleanser would be one where I wouldn’t need a moisturizer afterward), so I added Polyquat-7 and upped the glycerine to 7%.

I also wanted to make my cleanser look and smell fancy, so I added 1.5% Perlatin (inci: Glycol Distearate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Cocamide MEA, Laureth-10 ) to give it a mother of pearl look (though thinking back, I’m not sure this was a good move, as I have no idea whether it’s suitable for use on the face). I like nice smelling things when I get ready in the morning as it helps wake me up in a relaxed way and puts me in a good mood when otherwise I wouldn’t be at 6am ;) so I *had* to add some fragrance oil! And because I’m a girly girl at heart, I added 2 drops of liquid pink colorant!!

The making:During the making of the facial cleanser I came across two obstacles near the end.

The perlatin was really hard to dissolve (it just became bits floating about), so next time I'll add it to the heated water phase (if it's ok for face products!).

I used GFthix (inci: PEG-150 pentaerytrityl tetrastearaat (and) Aqua (and) PEG-6 Caprylic / Capric) instead of Crothix and this was even more impossible to mix than the perlatin and I ended up with a huge, gummy clump on my fork. So I transferred the clump into a separate containter and mixed this with a little of the cleanser mix. It then took on the consistency of bubble gum and once it became a bit more loose in consistency, I transferred it back to the cleanser mix. Next time, I might use half of the heated water phase to dissolve the GFthix first and then add it to the surfactant mix…as I ended up loosing so much cleanser in the end ( my 100ml bottle only filled up to about 75-80ml).

Furthermore, none of the fragrance oil came through :( All I can smell is surfactant, which is a shame, as I want to keep the FO % as low as possible.

The final consistency is still liquid, but I trust that it’ll thicken up overnight.

It foams nicely and the cleanser glides onto my face. Eventhough it’s quite foamy, it doesn’t irritate my eyes (I can even keep them open if I want!). It’s easy to wash off and doesn’t leave my skin feeling “squeaky clean” like with cold process soap (upon rinsing off, cp soap makes your skin feel really rough?draggy? Like when you’d rub your finger on your skin you can literally hear a “squeak squeak” sound. I can’t find the right translation, but I hope you get what I mean).

Right after washing it off, my skin feels moisturized. Once my face starts to go from damp to fully dried, it feels super smooth and soft. However, once it’s fully dry, I start to feel my skin tightening, which I absolutely hate.

(and obviously I can't say anything about it's anti-pimple properties at the moment)

Things I’d consider changing/adding next time:- Find another mixing method for GFthix/perlatin- Verify whether perlatin is actually ok in face products- Add another film-forming/conditioning agent, my heart says BTMS-50 <3- Maybe add some other refatting/emollients/conditioning* agents like peg-7 glyceryl cocoate, C12-15 alkyl benzoate, olivem 300 to combat the tightness?- Research existing creamy/milky facial cleansers to see what ingredients they use and try to incorporate them *not sure if I’m using these terms 100% correctly as I still need to learn more about them!

So far I prefer my creamy SCI + BTMS-50 cleanser, in terms of overall skin feel.But I prefer this cleanser in terms of ease of use. So hopefully with the above tweaks it'll become my favourite!

Though since I jumped right in with extracts etc., I might actually go back to the base recipe first so I have something I can really compare the other versions to and build off of that (adding one extra ingredient/making one change at a time).

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Formulating & Creating Lotions! This 224 page e-book is perfect for those of you familiar with lotion making and ready to start creating your own recipes! I've included all the information I know about the HLB system, as well as my base recipes for lotions, creams, body butters, and moisturizers!

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Lotion Making 101. This 305 page book includes everything you wanted to know about the basics of making lotions, including the chemistry of our lotions, ingredients we use, keeping your lotions safe, equipment you might need, and more recipes than I could count! For those of you who don't have the Back to Basics book, I've included all the carrier oil, exotic oil, and butter profiles.

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Back to Basics: Anhydrous Products. This 122 page e-book includes over 50 recipes and explanations for making lotion bars, whipped butters, balms, oil based scrubs, bath melts, bath oils, oil based sprays, solid scrubs, and facial sera, as well as all the carrier oil, exotic oil, and butter profiles and everything I've gathered about the chemistry of our oils including fatty acids, mechanisms of rancidity, phytosterols, and polyphenols.

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Who the heck is Swift?

I'm an aspiring cosmetic scientician and DIY girl interested in pretty much any craft you can name - bookbinding, jewellery making, sewing, paper crafts, polymer clay - but my main passion is bath & body product making.
I am currently obsessed with Rock Band (bass and singing) and science books. Did you know my favourite word is "toaster" and my favourite adjective is "hirsute"?